Suzukin & Cheesecake Melliza

It was a quite Thursday morning. Just one uneventful day at the office. Maidette went on a personal errand to fetch the TMX toy for her son, while Mimi was out on leave. That left me, Gentley and Chay as lunch buddies for the day.

We all love cheap and good food. Hence, today, although we originally planned for Fat Micheals to try out for lunch, we decided against it becuase our group was not complete. Instead, we wanted to be adventurous and eat at Suzukin.

Suzukin is a little known Japanese kitchenette in the area of Makati. It used to be the unique hole in the wall type of dining place, where good, authentic japanese cuisine is served day-in, day-out. I've known the place since 1995 when my friends from La Salle introduced me to this place, and since then, I have been a diner on occassions. Gentley has also been a patron for quite some time now. He claims to have admired a pretty waitress in the place, sometime ago.

Anyways, we all ordered the lunch specials. It included a soup bowl of japanese miso, shrimp tempura, chicken tonkatsu, tuna steak, pork teriaki, bean sprouts and dilis on the side. It's like a sampler of certain japanese cuisine that's adapted to filipino pallets.

The miso soup, according to Gentley, traced its origins to provincial japanese cooking. It included cubes of tufo, eggplant cutlets, hints of nori and the miso. It tasted good and everyone seemed to be agreement. I traded my chicken with Gentley's tuna steak and I had one good meal of the day. I finished early the bowl of rice and downed in no time, the bottle of soda that I ordered, as well.

We casually talked about the bickering in Couples For Christ and how certain christians behave - seemingly becoming more self-righteous than their catholic brothers. Gentley talked about the indoctrination in Iglesia ni Cristo, whereby, it was taught that in the end of days, its members are taught to rush to their churches or temples, as literally, it becomes a spaceship and will fly the devouts to heaven. In fact, the spires architecture of the Iglesia churches have a reason - in the end of days, these spires are supposed to pierce through whatever may hinder, block or stop the churches from flying through the heavens. I was dumbfounded, I never realized that the Iglesia's were taught this doctrine of flying churches.

Then we talked about ghosts and spirits. Everyone seemed to agree that ghosts and spirits are real and nothing but manifestations of the devil himself. However, Chay respected the fact the dwarves and spirits are there but could not harm human beings provided you are strong in your faith. Then we talked about life after death. Chay and Gentley were in agreement that a man's soul leaves the body, right after death and goes directly to either heaven or hell. I seemed to disagree on this. To me, there is life after death. However, the soul or spirit, does not get judged and face God, not until the end of days or Judgment Day. Hence, the heaven and hell thingy does not happen until the judgment day comes. Chay will not believe that at some point, the soul or spirit will be left in limbo. She planned to consult her christian friends on this one.

Anyways, we settled our bill and I paid Php125.00 for my meal. We left for Cheesecake Melliza, a pastry shop some two blocks away. Gentley was delightful enough to treat us for desserts.

Cheesecake Melliza has a wide assortments of cheesecakes and pastries. However, we ordered the Caramel Walnut Cheesecake, Blueberry Cheesecake and the Triple Chocolate Cheesecake. Alvin was invited by Gentley to join us for desserts. Of the three cheesecakes we tried, I liked the Caramel Walnut the most. It was creamy to the taste and easy on the pallet. It didn't hit me like those cheesecakes with soury taste when the creamcheese gets heated in the oven and mixed with sourcream.

It was a beautiful ending to our lunch escapade for the day.